Posted
by
samzenpus
on Friday September 18, 2015 @02:59AM
from the making-a-change dept.

sciencehabit writes: If you're a caterpillar, you do not want to meet a parasitic wasp. The winged insect will inject you full of eggs, which will grow inside your body, develop into larvae, and hatch from your corpse. But a new study reveals that wasps have given caterpillars something beneficial during these attacks as well: pieces of viral DNA that become part of the caterpillar genome, protecting them against an entirely different lethal virus. In essence, the wasps have turned caterpillars into genetically modified organisms.

Although I would not say 'true'. Science just provides understanding, we can't 'know' anything for sure. I don't think saying 'true' or talking about 'facts' achieves the desired effect of giving scientific understanding the status it deserves. Instead people confuse it for absolute knowledge (like religions claims) and think of a case where a scientist said they were sure and had 'facts', but were later proven wrong. Then they think you're trying to fool them.

While "truth" has a lot of baggage with it and probably should be used with caution, it can mean anything from absolute truth in philosophy to, "True as far as we know," in science. And I think science should continue to use the word fact where appropriate, and what people need to learn is that facts are not absolute and always open to questions (even if in some cases the questions would have to get convoluted...). The world is not a binary true/false kind of place, and all information comes with a variet

What it means for the study of evolution is that, instead of dealing with a nice straightforward tree structure which is easy to explore and search, we find that evolution is actually a graph, complete with cycles and potentially flow in multiple directions. This is a LOT harder to work with.

And this is just retroviral gene transfer. Then theres hybridisation which turns out to happen in nature a LOT more than had been thought. There was a paper a while back that hypotisised that humans could have arisen fr

I'd love to read the "pig-chimp hybrid" paper you're referring to. When Darwin's evolution was out, there had been for a while arguments that humans actually came from pigs. So I almost don't believe this wasn't an april fool's joke.

No, it is still very much not out of date. Although horizontal gene transfer's role in evolution is still being understood, and it may be that the syncytin gene [nature.com] you reference is viral in origin, that certainty doesn't invalidate the standard Darwinian model so much as it adds on to it. To say it plays a larger role in evolution than mutation, at least right now with today's evidence, is quite an extraordinary.

From a 19th century point of view (when Genetics were still unknown), there was no difference between mutation and horizontal gene transfer. It was a small change in one individuum, which could be transfered to the offspring (if it didn't transfer to the offspring, it wasn't evolution at all). And this change wasn't acquired by experience and learning, as the Lamarckism postulates.

When Genetics was discovered, and the mechanism of the DNA and replication was understood, it was clear that this was the main mechanism of transferring information from one generation to the next, and that errors in transcribing allowed for a slow gene drift and thus for the acquiring of new properties. It was never claimed that this was the sole mechanism, it was just the one that was well understood and studied.

Evolution is true, but the 19th century model that it happened just through parent->child mutations is way out of date.

There are lots of virus fragments in mammalian DNA for example, and some of them are used for critical mammalian functions, such as turning off the foreign body rejection mechanism which would otherwise destroy developing embryos.

But that is because we mammals are part herpes, descendent from one very sick virgin platypus and her immaculate conception by Herpes.

Social Security is more like mandatory gambling or mandatory insurance. Your payout is determined by, but not limited by, the amount you put in. As long as you live (assuming SS doesn't collapse) you keep getting money. A savings account, on the other hand, only provides money until there's no money left.

You are so busy setting up your straw man that you don't even recognize that there is nothing natural about being stung by a parasitic wasp and having forcefully modified one's DNA. It is as artificial as it gets.

I mean, if we follow your path of thought to its logical conclusion then having me beating you up with a club would be having you evolved broken bones naturally.

Errr... not sure where you are going with that. The top definition is man-made, because that's what it means. And certainly, nothing about the wasp is non-natural. A wasp stabbing a caterpillar is neither artificial nor non-natural nor unreal.

Also, what is that gray box? The one you copy pasted that from? It's not the definition of the word (which you imply by your copy past). The top definition according to merriam-webster is:

"man-made" is an overtly narrow definition, because by that definition machine-made stuff is suddenly not artificial anymore. Thus it makes more sense to use the actual etymological root of this word ("made by art or skill").

As for the wasp, the wasp itself is natural, the caterpillar as well. The genetic modification performed by the wasp is anything but. It introduces completely new treats and would have created a new species if not the fact that the caterpillars are doomed after the sting anyway.

There needs to be a word to cover the concept "not made by man", and the chosen word is "natural". If you include man-made things in the "natural" concept, the word distinguishes nothing and has no communicative value.

We are men, and it is reasonable that a significant portion of our vocabulary refers to men and their activities, and distinguishes them from all other possibilities.

Look, there ain't anything inherently bad about GMO. It's just the combination of GMO with incredibly powerful, greedy-without-bounds, out of control corporations what is possibly going to eliminate us from this planet (cockroaches will survive, mind you).

The day Monsanto and the likes disappear I'll reconsider my position on GMO.

Not quite. There is also the added problem with Monsanto et al. that due to their technological prowess, they might be capable of introducing entirely artificial genetic modifications that prove to be disastrous in the wild, but would not really have been possible via natural means like the one observed with the wasps and caterpillars.

A good analogy would be that nuclear fission is fairly harmless under normal circumstances: there are plenty of radioactive isotopes around in nature in trace amounts, and in

It's just the combination of GMO with incredibly powerful, greedy-without-bounds, out of control corporations what is possibly going to eliminate us from this planet

Well, that's not an overly dramatic exaggerated misrepresentation at all.

The day Monsanto and the likes disappear I'll reconsider my position on GMO.

That's absurd. That's like saying cooked food is bad because you don't like McDonalds. Even if we assume that all the urban legends about Monsanto are true, and that for some strange reason they really are these Saturday morning cartoon super villains that so many people take them for, are you really going to oppose things like the Rainbow papaya (university made, by the University of Hawai'i & Cornell University), Golden Rice (NGO made, by the International Rice Research Institute), Bt eggplant (government made, by Bangladesh), ect. on the basis that someone else is doing something wrong with the same technology?

Yes, there's only Pioneer, Syngenta, BASF, Dow, Bayer CropScience, ect. Ever been to any of their operations? I have. Those are far from negligible alternative seed sources.

Except that McDonalds isn't (successfully) lobbying governments around the world to rule out home cooking.

And what, exactly, are you implying Monsanto is lobbying governments to forbid? The only ones I see doing that are the anti-GMO groups who would ban even publicly funded GE research.

Except that McDonalds hasn't bought out whole university departments and has a thumb on publication of their results.

So I've been told. Well, I happen to be in one of those often accused of being bought out university departments, and damnedest thing, I keep missing those lucrative selling out seminars. Accusations of conspiracy are the last resort of the wrong. If I was willing to sell myself out for Monsanto or the like I'd just up and work for them and take a nice pay raise while I'm at it. Now, if you have proof of this cabal (which must clearly be clearly global, given the genetic engineering research the world over), and I really am being left out of all that good old Monsanto corruption money without so much as a free Monsanto T-shirt to show for it, I'm willing to hear it, but it better be good, because I think you just made that up.

Well, I happen to be in one of those often accused of being bought out university departments, and damnedest thing, I keep missing those lucrative selling out seminars.

Yeah, I never had any luck with that myself when I was in grad school.

The whole GMO debate just looks completely insane from a practicing scientist's point of view - it's like we were arguing about microscopes, or test tubes. It's quite shocking for people who consider themselves bleeding-heart liberal environmentalists to discover that they

Yes. I think a lot of the problem is that people are very disconnected from agriculture, and tend towards having little knowledge of basic botany. Agriculture has become so successful over the past century (in developed countries anyway) that we've gone from having half the population engaged in farming to less than 2%. And when it comes to plant knowledge, very few people have much of it. I've heard people claim that GE crops don't produce any seeds, and that's scary. Not because they actually believe

I think a lot of the problem is that people are very disconnected from agriculture, and tend towards having little knowledge of basic botany. Agriculture has become so successful over the past century (in developed countries anyway) that we've gone from having half the population engaged in farming to less than 2%.

And to the extent they know anything about agriculture, it's entirely anecdote-driven and usually disconnected from the broader reality. I'm a big supporter of local organic family farms (serious

It's so frustrating for me because I have an Aunt who is theistic but not religious. She fully subscribes to the anti-GMO, anti-vaccine, anti-traditional medicine, yadda yadda yadda. She has a very poor grasp of the science behind all this stuff, her defense against vaccines when I suggest that those that do not take vaccines should not be permitted in public schools was, "I know that my child is protected from those viruses because I gave my child the right nutrients and exposed him in a way that he can't

The level of fear-mongering, ignorance, outright lies, and sometimes spittle-flecked hatred is so disturbing that it's taken all the fun out of mocking right wing science-deniers. And occasionally it descends to violence, like the assholes who destroyed the Golden Rice (note: not a Monsanto product) plot in the Philippines.

The actual debates over Golden Rice and the Rainbow Papaya give a depressing look at how much the goalposts are moved in the debates too.

G: "Golden Rice, fortified with beta carotene, could save 40,000 lives a day!"A: "It might not be poison this time, but it doesn't produce enough beta carotene, so it's useless. Don't use it. Cultivate a home garden, ghetto kids!"G: "It's not feasible to suggest that these dirt-poor people with no yards or houses grow beans and pumpkins."A: "Well they can't afford yellow r

are you really going to oppose things like the Rainbow papaya (university made, by the University of Hawai'i & Cornell University), Golden Rice (NGO made, by the International Rice Research Institute), Bt eggplant (government made, by Bangladesh), ect. on the basis that someone else is doing something wrong with the same technology?

I think the concern here is that, even with the best of intentions and with GMO foods that in the short term provide great benefits, we still can't be sure we're not missing something crucial. Potential problems from GMO foods, (such as possibly bad genetic modifications showing up in the human genome as a result of food genes that likely wouldn't have occurrred outside of a laboratory), might not show up for years, or even a generation or two. And they might even not be immediately traceable to GMO foods.

Many environmentalists, anti-GMO people, organic food proponents, etc., are just anti-corporate advocates behind a thin veil. By far not all, as there are plenty of people in those groups who are there for the actual cause. But I've found it annoying and counterproductive with people hiding one cause behind another, even if I completely agree with both causes, because it results in so much BS.

The difference is that people trust natural selection to weed out the mistakes. They don't trust human intelligence to find all the possible problems. So they think of a human messing around as a bigger risk than natural processes messing around. Because some people think everything in nature can be trusted and is 100% safe...

Horizontal gene transfer has been known for a long time, moreso, the mechanics of transfering a gene via retroviral DNA- or RNA-fragments into a cell came first, and only then there was the idea, that we could transfer arbitrary genes via the same mechanism. Thus GMO is a result of discovering the mechanism of horizontal gene transfer.

If horizontal gene transfer happens, if affects only a single individuum, the one getting hit with the retrovirus carring the new DNA and thus acting as gene shuttle. In the most cases, the DNA transfer will not affect the offspring, as the gonades aren't hit by the virus, and thus the genetic modification will die with the individuum. Sometimes, the DNA transfer affects the gonades and either the individuum will become completely infertile, or it will not have viable offspring. Thus the gene transfer dies with the next generation. Only if the DNA proves to be advantageous for the individuum and its offspring, it will spread within the population, and it will take hundreds of generations until it has affected the whole population.

This is different from GMO, where millions of individua at the same time with the same genetic modification will be released at once, and we don't have hundreds of generations to watch the effects to the species itself and to its environment and biotopes.

As a side note: What if two patented crops from different companies crossbreed and carry both patented genes? Which company then has the right to sue the other for patent violation?

No, no , no, this is natural transgenics, and that makes things fine, because evolution just smooths things out like that, like it did with the appendix. That was the reaction to natural transgenes in sweet potatoes [sciencedaily.com] anyway You joke this might have an impact on the GMO controversy. It won't. Horizontal gene transfer has been known to exist for a long time; amazing what a little hand waving, armchair speculation, and goalpost moving can do to buffer an ideology.

Small pox is (virtually) eradicated thanks to immunization. It has nothing to do with the genetic code of the virus being incorporated into the DNA but because the immune system of vaccinated people has been taught to recognize and attack the virus before it can multiply or spread. The word "vaccine" derives from the vaccinia virus which causes small pox. A close relative of the virus causes cow pox and it was discovered that infecting someone with the latter gave them protection from the former.

Errr..what? And here I was thinking that most vaccines work by injecting people with a weakened variety of the virus and therefore inducing the body to create anti bodies? Which is different from injecting genetic code into our DNA.

You're wrong, kinda. Some vaccines use a weakened or dead version, there's also a few out there that use a live version that's not infectious. Others use near-cousins of the same type that occurs in other animals but isn't really transmittable to humans unless specific conditions occur.

the caterpillars may may not necessarily kill their hosts immediately after hatching, I'm not sure about this particular species, but there are examples of parasites that live and grow for quite a while within their insect hosts before killing them. See: horsehair worms.

Besides, I suspect that this viral DNA has more to do with keeping the insect alive _until_ the eggs hatch...

Darwin was moving away from theistic explanations of natural world for quite sometime. But despite rejecting Biblical explanations of natural sciences, he still believed on God. One of the things that pushed him towards full fledged atheism was the observation that these wasps would lay eggs and paralyze the caterpillars. So that the caterpillars do not die and decay, they stay alive to provide food for the hatched wasp larvae. The caterpillars being eaten alive revolted him and he could not believe a merci

Darwin was moving away from theistic explanations of natural world for quite sometime. But despite rejecting Biblical explanations of natural sciences, he still believed on God. One of the things that pushed him towards full fledged atheism was the observation that these wasps would lay eggs and paralyze the caterpillars. So that the caterpillars do not die and decay, they stay alive to provide food for the hatched wasp larvae. The caterpillars being eaten alive revolted him and he could not believe a merciful God would that to His creatures. Death of his 10 year old daughter also pushed him away from God. But still, out of deference to his wife he desisted publishing the Origin of species, till his hand was forced by Wallace.

And no, there was no deathbed conversion.

So had he never wondered why a merciful God would let human beings die in childbirth, or of cancer or whatever?